Psy-ops through the centuries

The battle for hearts and minds has been a feature of warfare since antiquity. The accompanying image shows Alexander the Great fighting the Persian king Darius III. To ease discontent among the peoples conquered by his Greek forces, Alexander encouraged intermarriage as a way to spread Hellenistic culture throughout the Middle East. Alexander also wasn't above spreading misinformation before a battle to mislead opponents - pre-internet, naturally.

Another favorite ploy: When the Greeks needed to withdraw in the face of a numerically superior enemy force, Alexander ordered his armorers to forge huge breastplates and helmets fit for men 7 to 8 feet tall. During night retreats, the Greeks would leave the over-sized armor in their camps for their opponents to find - and ponder.

Credit: Wikipedia

This portrait of Genghis Khan hangs in the National Palace Museum in Taipei. Like Alexander, Genghis Khan was also famous for head feints that famously left opponents utterly in the dark about the Mongol leader's intentions. The Mongols were also able to trade on a well-earned reputation for brutality, sending spies in advance of his army to spread tales of their strength and cruelty.

Another favorite tactic: On the field of battle, the Mongols would rapidly maneuver their armies so that the size of the force would appear larger than it actually was.

The Mongols also concentrated on disrupting their opponents information network, tasking a special cohort of horseman with the job of capturing and killing enemy messengers to cut off communications between commanders of the opposing forces.

Credit: Wikipedia

The accompanying woodblock image of Vlad III - also known as Vlad the Impaler - enjoying afternoon refreshments at an impalement says it all. This 15th century prince of Wallachia, whose Romanian surname was Draculea, was famous for the impalement of 20,000 Turkish soldiers his forces captured after invading Wallachia. The story goes that this grisly sight played a decisive part in the decision of the Turks to turn back after encountering this grisly image.

Credit: Wikipedia

A 1918 photograph of English soldiers checking wind direction in advance of distributing Allied propaganda leaflets over German lines. The new technology of air power allowed armies for the first time to market their message en mass, both to soldiers and civilians on the other side. The practice of dropping leaflets urging surrender would later be taken up by opposing armies during subsequent wars throughout the 20th century.

Credit: Crown Copyright

Francisco Franco, second from the right, who led a successful rebellion to take power in Spain. During the Spanish civil war, one of his generals, Queipo De Llano, regularly used the (then new) technology of radio to broadcast the fate which awaited the loyalist forces if they failed to surrender. But it was a mismatch of the medium and the message as his grisly warnings helped reinforce the determination of the anti-Franco forces to resist. It reached the point where Franco's brother-in-law, Ram

Credit: Wikipedia

A photograph taken in 1940 of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in Munich, Germany. Under Josef Goebbels, the Nazi's broke new ground in perfecting a slick propaganda machine to complement Hitler's foreign policy objectives until war broke out in Sept. 1939 with Germany's invasion of Poland.

Credit: Unknown

U.S.- made leaflet earmarked for a German city. The translation is as follows: (In capital letters: "DO YOU WANT TOTAL WAR?"

The rest of the leaflet continues: "An enthusiastic YES was the answer of the Nazi-Meeting. Today Germany knows what total war means, better than Goebbels and his yes-shouters foresaw. The total war, wanted by the Nazis, will be continued with ever increasing weight and effectiveness, until Germany capitulates unconditionally."

One of the more impressive psy-op operations conducted by allied forces came during the prelude to the Normandy invasion. The Americans constructed an impressive number of mock airfields and ports, complete with phony men and material. During the evening of the invasion, Allied bombers selectively jammed German radar so as to allow it to recognize ships headed toward Calais. The movement of the ships, which blared out recordings from the American invasion at Salerno, temporarily confused German intelligence as the real invasion of Normandy got underway.

In one of the more storied instances of psy-op broadcasts by the BBC, an announcer made the following announcement to German troops then preparing for the invasion of England.

"Attention Jerries (British slang for the German soldier).

Since you are preparing to invade our country

it is important that you learn some English phrases.

Please Repeat after me, The Channel Crossing, The Channel Crossing.

Very good, now some words you will find helpful

while you are on the boat.

"The boat is sinking", "The boat is sinking".

Again very good! Now, let's practice the conjugation of verbs.

Now repeat after me.

"I am burning", "You are burning", "We are burning".

After the war, British Intelligence found out that the broadcast had convinced the German High Command that the English had invented a way to light the English Channel on fire and decided to postpone their plans.

An American soldier station in Japan loads a leaflet bomb" used to spread psy-ops material to Korean citizens during the Korean War.

Credit: U.S. Army

An Israeli leaflet dropped over Beirut portraying Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as a snake. The translation reads: "Beware!!! He appears to be a brother, but he is a snake." The idea was to play up lingering divisions within Lebanon between the Shia-backed Hezbollah and other confessional groups during the Israel-Lebanon war in 2006. The move backfired, however, when Israel withdrew without a decisive military victory after a month of battle and Nasrallah was able to portray the outcome as a victory for Hezbollah.

Credit: Psywar.org

U.S. Army PSYOP soldiers distribute newspaper products in the East Rashid region of Baghdad, Iraq in 2007. Headquartered at Fort Bragg, N.C., the 4th Psychological Action Group is comprised of about 1,200 Airborne soldiers and is the only active psyops unit in the United States. Several dozen civilian analysts, many with Ph.Ds, augment the group as members of the Strategic Studies Detachment. Additionally, about 75 percent of the men and women in psyops are reservists, and the program draws upon the expertise they cultivate in a variety of fields.

But do psy-ops work both ways? Rolling Stone magazine recently published a piece claiming that the army ordered a special unit to "manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war" in Afghanistan. The army denies the report's accuracy.

Finding a place to draw the line between propaganda and persuasion or education is always going to be a challenge. Here's a U.S. leaflet in Iraq with a caricature of Abu Musab Al Zarqawi snared in a rat trap. The caption reads: "This is your future, Zarqawi"